Kensi Gounden

Kensi Gounden presenting biography of Barbara Jordan (educator, lawyer and politician) was the first African American since Reconstruction to serve in the Texas Senate and then the first African American woman from the South to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Barbara Jordan was born in Houston, Texas on February 21, 1936. Due to segregation, Jordan could not attend The University of Texas at Austin, and instead chose Texas Southern University, a historically-black institution. After majoring in political science, Jordan attended Boston University School of law in 1956 and graduated in 1959.   Massachusetts bar exam but moved to Tuskegee Institute (later renamed  Tuskegee University ) in  Alabama  and taught there for one year before returning to Texas and became a lawyer there as well. Both as a state senator and as a U.S. congresswoman, she sponsored bills that championed the poor, the disadvantaged and people of color. As a congresswoman, she sponsored legislation to

Kensi Gounden - Macon Bolling Allen was the first recorded licensed African American lawyer in the United States. He was a self-taught lawyer who gained his knowledge and legal skills by serving as an apprentice and law clerk to practicing white lawyers in the pre-Civil War era. Negros as they were referred to in those times received their training by apprenticeship; however, they could not depend upon the practice of law for a living. They had to work at other crafts. Allen was also known as a businessman, but the nature of the business is not known. Little is known about Allen's early years other than the fact that he was named A. Macon Bolling when he was born a “Free Negro” in Indiana in 1816, the same year Indiana was admitted as the nineteenth state to join the Union. He was listed as “mulatto” race on early census forms. Allen learned how to read and write as he grew up, and his first job in Indiana was that of a schoolteacher. On July 3, 1844, Allen passed the exam and b

Kensi Gounden presenting the biography of Alan Morton Dershowitz. He is an American attorney, political commentator, and jurist. He has spent the past fifty years practicing the law and is well recognized for handling a number of high-profile legal cases and citatons. As a criminal appellate attorney, Alan has won fifteen, which is a high percentage of the dozens of attempted murder and murder cases he has managed. The attorney has represented several celebrities, which include Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, and Patty Hearst. His most prominent cases include his role as an appellate consultant in the O.J. Simpson case, and for overturning the conviction of Claus von Bulow in 1984. He is a prominent scholar on United States constitutional law and criminal law, and a leading defender of civil liberties. He spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there until his retirement in D